Today’s Top Stories
1. Israel’s security establishment is furious with cabinet minister Yuval Steinitz after he disclosed that Egypt flooded Hamas tunnels at Israel’s request.
Overnight Friday, Egypt flooded 10 tunnels, using pipes to pump water from the Mediterranean Sea and bring about their collapse.
An additional tunnel was exposed Friday, presumed to have been successfully utilized by Hamas to smuggle weaponry, building material, and rocket part components into the Strip.
2. According to Haaretz, a disagreement over security cameras on the Temple Mount is delaying their installation. We’re talking about technical details about who gets access to the footage (and how), and where exactly they will be stationed.
Senior Israeli officials and Western diplomats have expressed concern that a solution will not be found before Passover, when the number of Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount increases.
Jordan also warned that a planned mixed-gender prayer area on the southern end of the Western Wall violates Waqf jurisdiction of holy sites and will damage the ruins of a 7th century Umayyad palace that once stood in that location.
3. World leaders winding down their terms of office tend to associate personal legacy with one more push for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Jerusalem’s worried about President Obama backing UN resolutions in the final weeks of his term.
And judging from Ban Ki-moon’s latest comments, I wonder if he caught the legacy bug from French FM Laurent Fabius. Ban’s tenure ends on December 31, 2016. (If you’re interested in the political jockeying surrounding the appointment of his successor, see the latest in The Observer).
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Israel and the Palestinians
• A Sudanese migrant stabbed an IDF soldier in Ashkelon this morning. On Saturday evening, a 65-year-old grandmother was stabbed in a market in the Bedouin town of Rahat. Police suspect that a prayer tent fire next to the West Bank settlement of Karmei Tzur was Palestinian arson.
According to Karmei Tzur residents, the suspected arsonists piled up the Torah scrolls and set them alight.
• After two 13-year-old Israeli Arab girls stabbed a security guard in Ramle, the mother of one of the girls apologized for what her daughter did.
• Senior PA official Nabil Shaath to the West: ‘Do we have to hijack planes for you to care about our cause?’ The Jerusalem Post picked up on the latest comments caught up by Memri.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7gkBJtjm3k
• In the wake of the CBS News headline debacle, Israel’s Government Press Office threatened to revoke press credentials from “negligent” journalists. And if you haven’t already done so, please sign HonestReporting’s letter demanding accountability from CBS News.
• YNet visited the Israel-Gaza border. Opposite one Israeli community, the Palestinians erected a fortified border post featuring an Islamic State flag flying alongside the Palestinian one.
• This is rich: The European Union called on Israel to stop demolishing illegal Palestinian structures, many of which have been funded by the EU.
• EU: €155m in R&D deals proves there’s no boycott of Israel
• Turkish businesses want to rebuild Gaza for $5 billion. Hurriyet takes a closer look.
• Details are scant, but a 55-year-old Israeli national missing since Wednesday was found in Lebanon. UNIFIL returned the man to Israel. The Jerusalem Post adds:
According to an IDF official, the incident did not likely have a background of hostile activity.
• Standard & Poors affirms Israel’s A+ credit rating
Around the World
• The Melbourne Jewish community met with the top editor of The Age to discuss the paper’s coverage of Israel. It was a testy evening for Andrew Holden who basically said Israeli deaths don’t sell papers.
But Mount Scopus Memorial College principal Rabbi James Kennard accused Holden of “a straw-man argument . . . I don’t think the suggestion or concern is that you or The Age deny Israel’s right to exist . . . What is concerning is what most people would call bias . . . Of course you’re entitled to hold Mr [Benjamin] Netanyahu to account, most of us do as well, but where is the similar . . . investigation into . . . Hamas and the Palestinian Authority?”
Holden countered: “If you were the ambassador of Mexico, you would excoriate me for the fact that the only stories I ever run about Mexico are drug lords killing people … it’s the nature of news … that we do focus on the negative and critical.”
But despite his dictum that, in his words, “bad news sells”, Holden claimed Israelis dying at the hands of Palestinians is not the news his readers think important.
• Rioting students who disrupted an Israel Society event at King’s College, London, have been referred to the school’s disciplinary committee after an investigation found that the disorder was pre-planned. While one student faces potential expulsion, the majority of the protesters were not from King’s College, and may banned from future campus events. More at the Times of London.
• Radical islamist preacher from Morocco banned from participating in Muslim Fair in Belgium, also banned in France because of anti-Semitic statements.
• Worth reading: The BBC looks at the life of being discreetly Jewish in Marseilles.
• Twitter says it suspended 125,000 accounts for promoting or threatening terror in 2015. The New York Times picked up on Twitter’s statement.
• Anti-Semitic video shown at New York high school discontinued.
Commentary/Analysis
• The New York Times is literally cashing in on Iran. Lee Smith explains how:
The Post’s No. 1 rival, the New York Times, did the Post one better: It not only gave the moderates all the great press they wanted, but as Rezaian languished in prison, it set up a travel business to send tourists to the land of his captors. “Travels from Persia” is one of the pricey travel packages put together by “Times Journeys,” which is operated by “the business side of the New York Times Company.” (The Times did not reply to requests for comment.) You can be pretty sure that the regime in Tehran doesn’t recognize the business/journalism distinction, and the paper of record didn’t help matters when it pulled down the firewall with both hands, by having name reporters like Roger Cohen, Elaine Sciolino, and John F. Burns moonlight as tour guides.
In Foreign Policy, my Tablet magazine colleague James Kirchick found it “dismaying that the Times would collaborate in a business venture with a government currently imprisoning an American reporter.” However, that’s apparently why the Times went into business with the regime: to spare their own people the fate of Jason Rezaian, while also ensuring that they would have plenty of access to the regime—or the only people in the regime who speak to Western reporters, namely the moderates. It’s a bribe, like the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which gave Iran over $100 billion plus massive sanctions relief in exchange for promising to hold off for 15 years on building a nuclear bomb.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Ami Ayalon: Protesters silencing speakers like me won’t solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem
– Melanie Phillips: Those nice Israel-bashers’ Achilles’ heel
– Daniella Greenbaum: Columbia U. Apartheid Divest divests from peace
– Jonathan Tobin: No playing nice with a corrupt UN
– Aaron David Miller: A new US president won’t mean a new Bibi
– Hanin Ghaddar: Iran won Lebanon
Featured image CC BY-NC-SA Jean-Jacques Merlin; Robinson’s Arch CC BY Lilach Daniel;
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